And you can read Jim Joyce's lips as he's yelling at Tigers first baseman Miguel Cabrera shortly afterward. "There ain't no f-ing way." Oh, really? That was the worst call in sports history given the situation. And he appears on replays to be nearly ready to signal out before signalling safe.
I have to give credit for Galarraga and Detroit manager Jim Leyland for being classy about the mistake. But they never should have been put in that position. I feel badly for Joyce, who no doubt is beating himself up over this bad call.
If this was the NFL, the NBA, college football or college basketball, this would have been reviewed and this would have been fixed.
Interestingly, no more than 30 minutes after that baseball game, the Philadelphia Flyers were awarded a goal in the Stanley Cup finals. Replays showed that the puck Scott Hartnell redirected went past the goal line. It had been ruled no goal on the ice. Even though they played a couple of minutes afterward, NHL officials still reviewed it and the right call was made.
The NHL had the rules in place to allow the correct call to be made.
I'm very much a traditionalist when it comes to baseball. I hate the designated hitter, for example. But it's time to loosen up the replay-review rules. The only time a replay review can be used now is for boundary plays and to rule whether a fly ball is a home run or not.
What happened Wednesday never should happen again.
They should give umpires a chance to review any play, except for balls and strikes, after the seventh inning if a pitcher has a no-hitter. I really don't want to see delays for replays of plays at first in regular-season games except in these sorts of situations.
Come on, Bud. You let the World Series get canceled one year. Don't let another pitcher lose a deserved place in history over a completely blown call by an umpire.
This was a shameful moment for Major League Baseball.
